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THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 5, 2015
ABOVE TAMARA SHOPSIN OPPOSITE CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT CAITLIN MOGRIDGE/REDFERNS/GETTY PAUL R GIUNTA/GETTY
SHIRLAINE FORREST/WIREIMAGE/GETTY GEORGE PIMENTEL/WIREIMAGE/GETTY GARY WOLSTENHOLME/REDFERNS/GETTY
THE CRITICS
POP MUSIC
LATE STYLE
New Order's continuing influence.
BY ANWEN CRAWFORD
The English band New Order is
thirty-five years old. Such is its in-
fluence on the large, hybrid musical ter-
ritory we might call "synth pop" or "dance
rock" that entire careers are impossible
to imagine without it.There might have
been no LCD Soundsystem, or the Rap-
ture, or the flurry of similar acts that
arose in New York in the early aughts;
there would be no Radiohead, either. "It's
very di cult to genuinely impress my
bandmates," Phil Selway, the Radiohead
drummer, said during a recent BBC Radio
broadcast, introducing his guest, the New
Order drummer Stephen Morris. His
mere name, Selway explained, had re-
duced the other members of Radiohead
to a state of hushed awe. "I made Radio-
head go all quiet!" Morris replied, in his
thick northern accent. "Blimey!"
The music of New Order has cre-
ated a kind of communion between the
melodic conventions of pop and the
rhythmic possibilities of dance music---
and also between traditional rock in-
struments (bass, guitar, drums) and elec-
tronic alternatives (drum machines,
synthesizers, sequencers).The musicians
give something heartfelt to their ma-
chines, while the machines propel the
musicians beyond their human deficien-
cies. The result is songs that move to-
ward the vibrancy of dance music but
don't always arrive, getting caught in-
stead in little eddies of melancholy. New
Order's best songs tend to be long, spill-
ing over the boundaries of pop's three-
minute template; they feel borne along
by joy and sorrow in equal parts.
Last week, the band released "Music
Complete," its ninth studio album. In
the decade since its previous major re-
lease, "Waiting for the Siren's Call," the
keyboardist Gillian Gilbert has returned,
after ten years of absence, and Peter
Hook---whose fluent bass lines have
formed one of New Order's most recog-
nizable qualities---has left, in a fug of ac-
rimony. The members of New Order
consistently downplay their individual
contributions, preferring to present them-
selves as a unit, but that hasn't stopped
people from asking: Can a New Order
record properly be a New Order record
without Peter Hook? (But could it be
one without Gillian Gilbert?) Where
does the spirit of the band reside?
The answer, though it conforms to
every cliché of rock and roll, may be
that the spirit of New Order was stron-
gest when the band was in its youth.
"Music Complete" is certainly the best
of New Order's late-career albums, and
the best since the underrated "Repub-
lic," released in 1993. It contains a hand-
ful of songs to add to other treasures
in the band's catalogue, along with many
that are forgettable by the group's own
standards. It is di cult for the musi-
cians of New Order to surpass them-
selves, or to convince a listener that
they have anything left to prove.
For the band's first twelve years, it was
closely linked with, though never
o cially signed to, the Manchester-based
label Factory Records, which shunned
formal contracts. Factory was more suc-
cessful as a conceptual prank than as a
functioning business venture: it assigned
catalogue numbers to a lawsuit, a Man-
chester night club named the Haçienda,
and the Haçienda's resident cat, before
declaring bankruptcy, in 1992.
Factory was headed by the impre-
sario and television journalist Tony
Wilson (when he died, in 2007, his
co n was given a catalogue number),
and the label's graphic designer was
Peter Saville, who is still responsible
for creating all of New Order's record
sleeves. Saville's designs for the band,
using grids, color blocks, and stock
photos, resemble advertising for a com-
pany that does not exist. Just as the
members of New Order have tended
to be subsumed by the group as a whole,
the visual style creates a dislocation be-
tween the band and its audience.
When New Order fails to move---
move the feet, move the heart---it is
because the music and the image re-
cede too far into the group's expected
pattern, so that the gap between the
band and the listener is no longer mys-
terious but, rather, vacant. For another
band, the title "Music Complete" might
seem arrogant; for New Order it feels
like a placeholder.
"Restless," the album's lead single,
has a mood that New Order has ex-
plored many times before: a wakeful
poignancy, like the dawn walk home
after the best party of your life. (If New
Order has never quite been a dance
act, the music is nevertheless perfectly
suited to the club-goer's comedown.)
The song moves smoothly, in a seamless
blend of instruments; its craft is some-
thing that clumsier bands might covet.
New Order can turn out a good pop
song the way an athlete runs warmup
laps. What "Restless" lacks is the small
grain of perversity that has made other
New Order songs as glorious as they
are inimitable---"The Perfect Kiss,"
for instance, from 1985, which includes
an interlude of synthesized, ribbitting
frogs. Why frogs? Why not.
One of the new album's best songs
is "Stray Dog," which features a grav-
elly spoken-word narration by Iggy
Pop, very di erent in tone from the
singer and guitarist Bernard Sum-
ner 's light and sometimes colorless
singing voice. The friction between
the vocals and the deft instrumental